For the Southern Literary Messenger.
——"Urged by a curiosity common to all strangers, Captain Lockerby visited the tomb of Bonaparte. The spot where the tomb stands is only accessible by ticket. It was railed round with green palms, and a sentinel walked round it night and day to prevent approach within the railing."——
The following interesting communication from Peter A. Browne, Esq. of Philadelphia, was submitted last winter, by the Governor of Virginia, to the General Assembly. It was printed with the documents accompanying the annual message, and bound up with the legislative journals, but has had no other publicity. It is thereforenewto nineteen-twentieths, if not toALLof our readers. We confess we feel somewhat mortified, that the valuable hints and suggestions thrown out by an intelligent and scientific stranger, should have failed to attract the attention of our public functionaries. We are not without hope, however, that a subject of such vital importance as a geological survey of the state, will claim the earnest and speedy consideration of the people, as well as their representatives. It is one of those subjects upon which all parties, however divided by sectional jealousies or other adverse views, may meet on common ground, and unite in harmonious action. There is no portion of the commonwealth which is not deeply interested in the development of its mineral wealth—none which ought not to lend its hearty sanction to a scientific survey of the country by a skilful geologist. To say nothing of the noble example of other states—among them some of our youngest sisters—our interests are too deeply involved in the proposed undertaking, longer to defer it. Agriculture,—commerce,—the arts,—are alike concerned in the successful prosecution of a work which promises to each such essential benefits. The people of Virginia have been too long ignorant and unmindful of their own vast resources. Who would have dreamed a few years since, that a vein of precious gold, which, for two centuries, had escaped observation, actually enriched our soil? Who now can form an adequate conception of the various hidden treasures which science and enterprise may bring to light. Can the paltry consideration of a few thousand dollars expense, outweigh the magnificent advantages which are likely to result? Shall the present generation fold its arms in supineness, and leave every thing to be done by posterity? We earnestly exhort our legislators to take the subject into serious consideration.
The writer of the subjoined communication will be pleased to learn that the mineral springs of the state, (which might in themselves be made a source of boundless wealth,) have been subjected to careful analysis during the past summer, by an able chemical professor in one of our colleges. It is understood that the results of his observation will in due time be laid before the public.
Philadelphia, Sept. 30, 1833.
SIR,—Although I have not the honor of a personal acquaintance with you, I have no hesitation in making the present appeal to your patriotism and wisdom, not doubting but that I shall find in the great and growing interest of the subject to the country at large, and particularly to that portion of the Union over which you preside with so much dignity and discretion, a sufficient apology for occupying so much of your valuable time, as will enable you to give the present communication an attentive perusal.
I have recently returned from ageologicalexcursion to Virginia. I entered the state near the head waters of the Potomac, passed thence to Winchester, followed the course of that fine valley to the Natural bridge; retracing my steps, I turned westwardly at Staunton, crossed the mountain at Jennings's gap, and visited the justly celebrated medicinal springs in that region; returning, I went from Staunton through Charlottesville to Richmond, and down the James to its mouth. When this tour is taken in connection with a former visit to Wheeling, it will be conceded that I have seen enough of the state, to enable me to form a rough estimate of its geological and mineralogical importance; and I do assure you, sir, that although my anticipations were far from being meager, I was astonished at the vastness and variety of interesting objects in that department of natural history, that were constantly developing themselves, inviting the mind of man to reflection, and his hands to industry, and displaying at every step the wisdom and beneficence of the great Creator.
I determined upon respectfully suggesting to your excellency the expediency of a topographical, geological, mineralogical and oryctological survey of Virginia. Should the enlightened representatives of the freemen of your state concur in this opinion, it will redound to the honor of all concerned, by the encouragement it will give to the study of the natural sciences—by the enhancement in value of lands in the interior, thereby enriching the state and its citizens, and giving a very proper check to unnatural migrations to the extreme west, by bringing to light and usefulness innumerable valuable crude materials, thereby not only enlarging the field of manufactures and the useful arts, but furnishing carrying for the canals and roads already constructed, and assisting in new internal improvements in locations of equal importance. That I may not appear to be too enthusiastic, pardon me for pointing out some of the most obvious features in the geology of Virginia. Whether we consider the comfort and convenience of our species, or the industry and prosperity of a state, there is no mineral production that can outvie in importance that ofcoal. In this country, where we have hitherto always had a superabundance of fuel, owing to the vast extent of our natural forests, the importance of a constant and abundant supply is not felt, and we are too apt to neglect properly to appreciate its value, but it is not so elsewhere, and a moment's reflection will shew that it ought not to be sohere. Without fuel, of what use would be to us the metallic ores? for instance iron, which is now moulded, drawn and worked into thousands and tens of thousands of useful instruments, from a knife, to the complicated machinery of a steam engine, would forever remain an indissoluble and useless mass of matter without the aid of fuel—even the steam engine itself, that colossus of modern machinery, without the assistance of fire would be inactive and impotent.
The Rev. Mr. Conybeare, an eminent English geologist, speaking of the coal veins (or coal measures, as they are there called,) of his country, thus expresses himself:
"The manufacturing industry of this island, colossal as is the fabric which it has raised, rests principally on no other base than our fortunate position with regard to the rocks of this series. Should our coal mines ever be exhausted, it would melt away at once, and it need not be said, that the effect produced on private and domestic comfort would be equally fatal with diminution of public wealth; we should lose many of the advantages of our high civilization, and much of our cultivated grounds must be again shaded with forests, to afford fuel to a remnant of our present population. That there is a progressive tendency to approach this limit, is certain, but ages may yet pass before it is felt very sensibly; and when it does approach, the increasing difficulty and expense of working the mines of coal, will operate, by successive and gradual checks, against its consumption, through a long period, so that the transition may not be very violent; our manufactures would first feel the shock; the excess of population, supported by them, would cease to be called into existence, as the demand for their labor ceased; the cultivation of poor lands would become less profitable, and their conversion into forests more so."
Where is the state in this union—I might, perhaps, safely ask, where is the country in the world, that can surpass Virginia in the variety of position and abundance of supply of this valuable combustible? She possesses, not only in common with her sister states, a liberal quantity of bituminous coal in her western and carbonaceous regions, where, according to geological calculations, bituminous coal might be reasonably expected to be found; but in the eastern division of the state, within a few miles of the tide water of a majestic stream, which empties its ample waters into the Atlantic ocean, in a geological position, where bituminous coal never would have been sought after, because bituminous coal could not there have ever been expected to have been found, bituminous coal of a good quality, and apparently in great abundance, has been found; nature seeming, as it were, in this instance, to enable her to favor an otherwise highly favored land, to have defied all her own rules, and baffled the skill of the gravest geologist, by depositing bituminous coal upon the naked and barren bosom of the uncarbonaceous granite! I have often wondered why this anomaly did not strike the capacious and highly gifted mind of Jefferson, and why he, or some other of the many reflecting men of Virginia, was not led by it to inquire, what else there might be in store for the good people of that state? By neglecting to seek for them, we ungratefully reject the proffered kindness of our Creator; the laws of inanimate matter are, in this respect, in unison with those that govern animated nature; we are furnished with the material and means, but in order to stimulate us to useful and healthful industry, we must labor in their appropriation. God gives us the earth and the seed, but we must plough and sow, or we can never reap; so he has bountifully placed within our reach innumerable valuable rocks, minerals and combustibles, but to enjoy them, we must delve into the bowels of the earth—and having found them, we must, by various laborious processes, render them fit for our use. To those who are accustomed to regard these things, it is difficult to determine which causes the most painful sensations, to observe how few coal mines, in comparison to what might be, are opened in the neighborhood of Richmond, or the want of skill exhibited in the selection and working of those recently opened. Nor is the deposite of the bituminous coal upon the granite, the only geological anomaly of this quarter. Proceeding from Charlottesville towards Richmond, almost immediately after you leave the Talcose formation of the Blue Ridge, you are astonished at the fertility of the soil; you can scarcely persuade yourself that you are travelling over a country of primitive rocks. Soon, however, you discover that the fertility is not universal, but confined to patches of a brick-red covering, that overlay the disintegrated materials of the primordial formations, and upon seeking further into this curious matter, your surprise is not a little increased, upon discovering that this brick-red covering owes its existence to the disintegration of a rock, which, in most other places, is exceedingly slow to decompose, and which, when decomposed, forms a cold and inhospitable soil. It is thehornblende sienite. Here it is surcharged with iron, which oxidating by exposure to the atmosphere and moisture, the rock freely disintegrates, and the oxide of iron being set at liberty, imparts its coloring to the ground, and fertilizes the soil in an extraordinary degree.
Professor Hitchcock, in his report of a geological survey of Massachusetts, makes the following remarks in relation to the effect of iron upon a soil:
"No ore except iron occurs in sufficient quantity in the state, to deserve notice in an agricultural point of view. In the west part of Worcester county, the soil, for a width of several miles across the whole state, is so highly impregnated with theoxide of iron, as to receive from it a very deep tinge of what is called iron rust. This is particularly the case in the low grounds; where are frequently found beds of bog ore. I do not know very definitely the effect of this iron upon vegetation; but, judging from the general excellence of the farms in the Brookfields, Sturbridge, Hardwicke, New Braintree, Barae, Hubbardston, &c., I should presume it to be good. Certainly, it cannot be injurious; for no part of the county exceeds the towns just named, in the appearance of its farming interest—and nearly all the county, as may be seen by the map, is of one formation. It would be an interesting problem, which in that county can be solved, to determine the precise influence of a soil highly ferruginous upon vegetation."
Next in geological and statistical importance, I would place the mineral springs of Virginia; and these would form a legitimate subject of investigation to those who should be appointed to conduct a geological survey.
I am not aware of any portion of country of the same extent, possessing an equal number and variety of mineral springs, as the counties of Bath, Greenbrier and Monroe. This is a subject upon which one might easily compose a book, but I must confine myself to a few lines. The waters are thermal and cold; the former of various degrees of intensity. They hold in solution a variety of metals, earths, acids, and alkalies, combined in various proportions, and suited to relieve the sufferings of invalids from a number of diseases. Mineral springs of less interest than these, have excited the attention of the learned in almost every age and country; and Virginia owes it to her high mental standing, independently of every other consideration, to assist the cause of science, by investigating the causes of the high temperature, and making accurate analyses of these waters. It is the duty of states, as it is of individuals, to furnish their quota to the general stock of information; and this is peculiarly the duty of a republican state, whose happiness, nay, whose very political existence, depends upon an improved state of the minds of its citizens. Mr. John Mason Good, in his "Book of Nature," after describing the barren state of society in the middle ages, says, "we have thus rapidly travelled over a wide and dreary desert, that, like the sandy wastes of Africa, has seldom been found refreshed by spots of verdure, and what is the moral? That ignorance is ever associated with wretchedness and vice, and knowledge with happiness and virtue. Their connections are indissoluble; they are woven in the very texture of things, and constitute the only substantial difference between man and man," and I would add, between state and state.
Has the heat of these waters any connection with volcanic phenomena? Or is the temperature entirely chemical, originating in the decomposition of sulphuret of iron, as I suggested some years ago in a paper published upon the subject? At the Hot Springs, the hot sulphur water and the cold pure water, issue out of the calcareous rock at the base of the Warm Spring mountain, within a few feet of each other. One of these Virginia Springs, makes a copious deposite of calcareous tufa; and at another, you perceive newly formed crystals of sulphate of iron. The White Sulphur Spring takes its name from a rich white deposite, and the Red Sulphur from one of that color. If this is not an uncommon and a highly interesting section of country, calling aloud for investigation, and meriting legislative interference, then have I taken an entirely erroneous view of the subject.
The Warm Spring mountain is white sandstone. The rocks of the valley of the Hot Springs are calcareous, argillaceous and silecious; they are all nearly vertical. At first the two former, and afterwards the two latter, alternate. They have all been deposited in a horizontal position, and between their narrow strata are thin layers of clay covering organic remains.—Those of the lime and slate are principally zoophytes. That of the silecious is the fossil described by Doctor R. Harlan, from a specimen obtained by me in the western part of the state of New York. He supposed it to be a now extinct vegetable fossil of the family fucoides, and he has called itFucoide Brongniard,—in honor of M. Brongniard. But I suppose it to beanimal, and to belong to the family of the Encrinites.1
1See an essay of Richard C. Taylor, F. G. S. on the geological position of certain beds which contain numerous fossil marine plants of the family fucoides; near Lewistown, Mifflin county, Pennsylvania, in vol. I. part I. of the Transactions of the Geological Society of Pennsylvania, page 1.
The mountain ranges of Virginia are more numerous, and the valleys consequently narrower, than they are in Pennsylvania; but some of them are very interesting. The great valley, as it is sometimes called, or par excellence,the valley, situate between the Blue Ridge and the North and Alleghany Mountain, is by far the most extensive. The rocks often obtrude, rendering the soil rather scanty, but nevertheless this is a fine district of country.
I could find no fossils in this rock. In regard to the metallic ores, I would observe, that I discovered sufficient indications of their existing in Virginia in quantity sufficient to justify a more accurate examination. Iron abounds in almost every part of the western section of the state. Traces of copper, lead, manganese and chrome, have also been discovered near the Blue Ridge; and the gold of Orange County is equal to any found in the Carolinas or Georgia.
I have never seen any thing that exceeds the richness and variety of coloring of the serpentine of the Blue Ridge. This mineral is easily cut, and the fineness and closeness of the grain renders it susceptible of a high polish. At Zoblitz in Saxony, several hundred persons are employed in its manufacture. Besides the minerals belonging to the Talcose formation, and generally accompanying serpentine, are many of them valuable in the arts—for instance, steatite, (soap stone,) talc, chromate of iron, clorite slate, and native magnesia. A geological survey would, most probably, lead to the discovery of most of these minerals.
I could make large additions to this communication, but for the fear of trespassing upon your patience. I will, therefore, close my observations with noticing two instances of want of confidence in the mineral productions of your own state, which I am persuaded that a geological survey would tend to correct. I met many wagons loaded with sulphate of lime (gypsum,) from Nova Scotia, being taken to the interior to be used as a manure; but I did not see one wagon employed to bring carbonate of lime (common lime stone,) from the inexhaustible quarries of the great valley to any other district to be used for the same purpose. In the beautiful and flourishing city of Richmond, I observed the fronts of two stores fitting up in the new and fashionable style with granite (so called,) (sienite,) from Massachusetts, while there exists in the James river, and on its banks, in the immediate vicinity of the town, rocks of a superior quality, in quantities amply sufficient to build a dozen cities.
I have the honor to be, sir,Your obedient servant,
PETER A. BROWNE.
To his Excellency John Floyd,Governor of Virginia.
The following tribute to the memory of Lafayette, having been transmitted from Paris for the purpose of being published in some American periodical, the gentleman by whom it was received, has requested that the same may be inserted in the Messenger.
He breathed not the atmosphere of cities at his birth; he was born on the mountain top; he inhaled with the breath of life, the breath of liberty. Though sprung from a lordly race, he was the people's friend; and, under every trial, he displayed the inborn dignity of man.
Rich too he was, but lucre was not his idol; and his liberality was as unbounded, as his heart was generous. At that season of life which, to common men, is a time for pleasure and dissipation, he heard and obeyed the holy call of freedom.
Far off, beyond ocean's bounds, a young and promising nation was struggling for its rights. He felt, as if instinctively, the part allotted to him on the stage of life; and he became America's adopted and beloved son, when in his native land, his name was scarcely known.
On returning to France, he found her laboring under mysterious warnings—of good or evil he knew not—the foreboding pangs of political convulsions; and he put his trust in the cause of humanity, because he judged of other men from himself.
But vain was his boldness and wisdom in council; in vain did he beard in their very den, the infuriate demagogues; a bloody pall was spread over his devoted country; he gave her up in despair, and the dungeon of Olmutz closed upon him as a tomb. When a brighter day arose, his freedom was stipulated as the most glorious trophy of his nation's victories. But the hurricane had swept the ancient fabric from the earth; not a vestige of it remained, so dreadful had been the storm. All the powers of the state were centred in one man; a man of selfishness and pride, who aimed at absorbing all wills in his own. And in sooth he did this, with one sole and great exception. The instinct of freedom, which was as the vital spark in our great citizen, kept him aloof from the man whose empty and ephemeral triumph is stained with the blood and tears of every nation. He retired to his paternal fields; and at a time when the sword ruled paramount, he guided the fruitful ploughshare.
Liberty was no more; and by a hard but just retribution, it was made the rallying word of nations against us. Then fell upon our country unheard of disasters and defeats; after which dawned a milder reign. He now reappears upon the public stage; he comes to heal our wounds, to rekindle in our hearts the love of liberty. He devotes himself to the task with a zeal unceasing, enlightened by long-tried experience, inspired by a pure and upright heart, and animated by a spirit of self denial never equalled. In the prosecution of this noble attempt—he dies!
He was one of those men who, at far and distant intervals, appear in days of degeneracy to arrest the right of proscription against virtue.
He disdained power, he despised riches, he abhorred corruption. He wished that all men should be happy and free.
Yet in the age of barefaced egotism, and under the reign of fraud and knavery, such disinterestedness and candor must inevitably be deceived; therefore is it that our political jugglers sneer at this great and good man—their grovelling minds understand him not.
But his name, pronounced with reverence in both hemispheres, is become the watchword of mankind laboring to be free; and it will stand for ages, as the brightest symbol of humanity.
Thy soul, oh Lafayette! was a pure and glorious emanation from that GODin whose bosom thou now hast found a resting place. He alone can reward thy manifold virtues, thy constant love of humanity, thy inexhaustible charity, thy piety and truth. Thou art blessed in Christ.
ALEXANDRE DE BOINVILLE.
Paris, May 1834.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
Hear you this triton of the minnows?—Coriolanus.
Hear you this triton of the minnows?—Coriolanus.
"Yet Mr. Pinkney is not an eloquent man; he is convincing, to be sure—and that is to be eloquent in one way; but he would be more, and fails." "Nothing can be further from eloquence, if by eloquence be understood any thing that is persuasive, beautiful, dignified or natural, than the declamation or reasoning of William Pinkney." "His best speeches are a compound of stupendous strength, feeble ornament, affected earnestness, and boisterous turbulent declamation." "But God never meant him for an orator; he has no property of mind or body—no not one, calculated to give him dominion in eloquence."
As old Doiley says in the farce, when told that "gold in the balance of philosophy was light as phlogisticated air," this must be deep, for I don't understand a word of it. The above are extracts from a work, in which the author undertakes to deny to Mr. Pinkney the praise of eloquence. No kind of composition confounds me more than criticism, and especially that sort which pretends to develope the characteristics of some distinguished orator. If one
as to "bear the palm alone," we feel a very natural curiosity to know what was his appearance, his manner, and peculiar style of eloquence; but alas! in the hands of the critic, he assumes so many shapes, that the imagination is absolutely bewildered, and we turn away in despair of finding out what the man was like. The critic like the newspaper, contradicts himself at every step. One sentence tells us what another denies; and we rise from the perusal of his sketch jaded and worn out with the variety of contrariant ideas which have passed through our brains. I am no critic, and heaven forbid I should ever belong to that cold hearted fraternity, who more often pervert taste than improve it; but I cannot forbear contesting the truth of this writer's assertions, and declaring that he seems to me to be a Lilliputian about the body of a Gulliver.
It has been said of Demosthenes, "that he has been deservedly styled the prince of orators. His orations are strongly animated, and full of the impetuosity and ardor of public spirit. His composition is not distinguished byornamentand splendor. Negligent of the lesser graces, he seems to have aimed at the sublime, which lies in sentiment. His action and pronunciation are said to have been uncommonlyvehementandardent. The Archbishop of Cambray gives him the preference to Cicero, against whom he makes the objection of too muchornament." According therefore to this author, if Wm. Pinkney was not an orator, it follows that Demosthenes was none; because their style of eloquence seems to have been alike in almost every particular, except that Pinkney aimed atornament, of which Demosthenes had none and Cicero too much. If speeches, characterized bystupendous strength, andturbulent declamation, andconvincing argument, are neither "persuasive, nor dignified, nor natural," then was not Demosthenes persuasive, nor dignified, nor natural, and of course he was no orator according to this definition. If ornament be a fault in Mr. Pinkney, he had it in common with Cicero; but perhaps the author may say that Cicero attained what Pinkney only aimed at. Hear him then again on the subject of ornament, so passionately loved by Mr. Pinkney. "Bring him in contact with a truly poetical mind, and his argument resembles a battery of colored fire-works, giving out incessant brightness and reverberation." It would seem then that ornament is not a common trait of his eloquence, but a glitter which is effected by attrition against poetical minds. It is then that he draws upon the inexhaustible stores of beauty laid up in his mind, gathered from the writings of Shakspeare and others, and retained by the force of a powerful memory. He has no fancy of his own, but uses the fancy of others. Then surely he is so far superior to Demosthenes, whose eloquence was thought to border on the hard and dry; alike impetuous, vehement, stupendous and convincing with him, and superadding a relish for the beauties of poetry; not aiming at anyornamentof his own, but contented with what suggested itself in illustration of his argument from the pen of others. Then how is he feeble in ornament? But again; if there be nothing of dignity or nature in Pinkney'sreasoning, how is it discovered that his mind is "adamant clamped with iron," [a poor conception, and suiting the ideas of a blacksmith better than a belles-lettres scholar—for the iron adds nothing to our thoughts of the strength of adamant;] that it is "a colossal pile of granite, over which the thunders of heaven might roll," &c. &c. It is useless to quote the rest of the unmeaning fustian of the sentence.
After all this avowal of stupendous strength of argument, we are told in a subsequent paragraph, that say what we will of Mr. Pinkney's argument, he the author, never saw him yet—no never, pursue his argument steadily for ten minutes at a time. Then how can it be so overwhelming and convincing? Nothing lessens so much the force of argument as a perpetual aberration from the subject. Again; "God never meant him for an orator; he has no property of mind or body," &c. &c. Not to say any thing of the presumption and impiety of determining for God, I would ask what are thebodily propertiesof an orator? This writer has not condescended to define them, although he dwells at large upon such as he thinks cast discredit upon Mr. Pinkney. It is scarcely necessary to observe that Demosthenes was ungraceful in figure and action; and that not onlyorators, but very wise and learned men, have been repulsive in their persons, their features, and their manners also. Though Cæsar and Cicero were exempt from defect in this respect, as far as I remember Demosthenes stuttered—Socrates was bald and flatnosed—Anthony a rough soldier—Lord Chatham's eloquence was forcible, but uniform and ungraceful—Fox was a fop of Bond street, and wore high heeled morocco shoes. Mr. Pinkney therefore may, without reproach, be a "thick, stout man, with a red fat English face," and Mr. Fox will keep him in countenance as a fashionable man. The facetious Peter Pindar has said, that
but I never heard that oratory did.
In the next breath we hear that "Mr. Pinkney has a continual appearance of natural superciliousness and affected courtesy."Continual—and yet afterwards "his manner is exceedingly arrogant and unpropitiating;" and his deportment had been already described as "brutal, arrogant, full of sound and fury, accompanied by the rude and violent gestures of a vulgar fellow." One moment he is a giant, not onlymetaphorically, but in sober truth, if we may judge from his stentorian lungs, which have caused the author's whole system to jar—and from those violent gesticulations, which indicate uncommon personal strength;—the next, he turns out to be only five feet ten, and a petit maitre, and affectedly courtly and conciliatory; and yet "nothing could make a gentleman of him; he can neither look, act,speak, sit, nortalklike one." Notwithstanding all this scurrility and abuse of Mr. Pinkney's person, the author is not yet exhausted, but lavishes more upon his intellect. "The physical powers of Mr. Pinkney," he says, "are to my notion, strictly correspondent with his intellectual ones; both arc solid, strong and substantial, but without grace, dignity or loftiness." Loftiness! the same man who has such "prodigious elevation and amplitude of mind," "and both havea dash of fat English dandyism." I confess myself wholly at a loss to comprehend what the fat dandyism of the intellectual powers is. A man's mind might, by a forced metaphor, be said to be dandyish, perhaps; but afat mind, is a solecism in words wholly inadmissible, I think. "His style of eloquence," it is added, "is a most disagreeable and unnatural compound of the worst faults of the worst speakers." "He is said to resemble Lord Erskine as he was in the day of his power: it is a libel on Erskine, who was himself a libel on the reputation of his country as a speaker." "The language of Mr. Pinkney does resemble that of Lord Erskine; his reasoning is about as forcible." If the term style here be the manner of speaking appropriate to particular characters, I have shown that the censure is equally applicable to Demosthenes, the prince of orators, who, in addition to his vehemence, was so ungraceful in his motions, that it was necessary for him to practice with a naked sword hanging over his shoulder; and therefore to compare Demosthenes to Lord Erskine is a libel on Lord Erskine, himself a libel on his country as a speaker—andargal, as Shakspeare says, Demosthenes is inferior to English orators. If, again, the word style mean the manner of writing with regard to language, these sentences would involve a contradiction, and Mr. Pinkney is like and unlike Lord Erskine at the same time.
Yet why do I talk of Demosthenes? In the following sentences the author admits that Mr. P. copied too closely after Cicero and Demosthenes. "He desired to be eloquent; he thought of Demosthenes and Cicero, and his heart swelled with ambition. He remembered not that he was to be a lawyer, and that Demosthenes and Cicero were declaimers. He who should look to move a body of Americans in a court of justice by the best thundering of Demosthenes, would only make himself ridiculous." Very true; and this may certainly prove that Mr. Pinkney might have been a greaterlawyer, by bending the whole force of his mind to that one pursuit; but it has nothing to do with the premises. The ground is here changed; this is not the point to be proved—not the quod erat demonstrandum. The point to be proved is not theproprietyof displaying eloquence before a jury, but that Wm. Pinkney was never meant by God for an orator; that he has no property of mind or body to make one. This is assuredly the scope of the extracts. Had Mr. P. not aimed atornament, his ashes might have passed undisturbed by the author, who allows that he was decidedly the greatestlawyerin America, but is very angry that he was not the greatest in the world. In spite of all this, however, Pinkney "pursued his way like a conqueror, and had well nigh established himself as the high priest of eloquence in America." Why, what a stupid, blind, misjudging race we must be, to think of choosing a man for our high priest of eloquence whom God never meant for an orator, and who had no property, not one, of mind or body, for his business—and never to awaken from our folly until this writer tore the urim and thummim from his breast. "The giant," he says, "is gone down like a giant to the household of death," and there should at least have escaped the imputation of baseness which deserved shooting. Howgiantsdie, I pretend not to know; but imagine such giants die pretty much like other people; and it seems to me perfectly ridiculous to talk of a man's dying like a giant. At that awful hour, the littleness of the greatest genius is a subject of melancholy reflection. I will only add that I know nothing of this writer. If his object was to guard us against the mischievous effects of a false taste in eloquence, he cannot be angry with me for wishing to guard against the equally bad effects of a false taste in criticism.
NUGATOR.
In this metropolis a real, downright exquisite is rarely to be seen. Curiosity may be gratified by a good description of the animal as exhibited in other places. The following communication is from one residing in a city much more fashionable than ours. Its author seems well informed in the science of æsthetics; and it is to be hoped that he will exert himself to correct mistaken impressions as to the beautiful. Further notices by him may be beneficial.
C.
Among the follies and vices of mankind, there is nothing more remarkable or ridiculous than the continual effort, among all classes and kinds of people—savage, civilized, and pseudo-civilized—to increase or impart beauty and comeliness to their forms and features. Through what various and opposite means is this cherished object pursued! This savage tattoos his cheeks—that smooths and oils them, and would esteem the gratuitous tattoonry of the small-pox a graver misfortune than all the pain attendant on the disease.
The Indians on our Western border are wont to assume the character of the bear, the panther, or some "other interesting beast of prey," and place their ambition in enacting the look and conduct of such beast to the life—and "to the death."
The belle of that age is surrounded by a vast circumvallation of hoop—of this, is pinched into a narrow breastwork of steel and whale-bone.
To cramp the feet into unnatural littleness is now the sad task of those who, to be beautiful, are willing to suffer the tortures of the thumb-screw—or the toe-screw, (it matters not.) The fashion changes, and long pointed shapeless boots deform the human foot.
In no age—in no condition, can men and women be persuaded that God Almighty has made them well,—albeit he hath "made man after his own image," and woman much better than man.
They must fall to reforming their forms by some fanciful deformity.
But the innovation stops not here. Thus far it might be borne. The human form cannot be wholly changed by all the ingenuity of vanity and fashion. It must still retain its principal attributes, and lose not all its lustre. Not so with manners. They are more plastic. From fashion and human folly they accordingly suffer most. Fashion is the sworn foe of nature, and in this field there is no natural bound to its triumphs.
On the face of the earth, or in the waters, there is no animal to my feelings so wholly hateful as a modern exquisite: a wretch that has put off his natural aspect to put on a clay mask, hard, ungainly, inflexible, of lifeless mud—which no Prometheus could vivify: a thing which can boast neither the humor of the monkey, nor the fierce respectability of the wild beast,—not the usefulness of the tame—still less the dignity and bearing of a man.
Sometime since, after sauntering an evening through a ball room, in which some such caricatures of men were existing, I went home and vented my rage in the following doggerel: